As hundreds of demonstrators pressed up against steel police barriers on Park Avenue, a block from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, an activist at the corner of East 48th Street cried over a loudspeaker, "break the barricades, f . . . the police".
In anti-globalisation protests before September 11th, this might have been the signal for mayhem. Not this time. The cry was ignored by the colourful, noisy marchers who had made their way to the site of the World Economic Forum on Saturday afternoon led by the Radical Rockettes in bright green costumes.
No one even shook the barriers.
Aggression by anarchist groups was clearly futile against the awesome display of baton-wielding riot police who corralled the protesters into block-long rectangles of metal. Several blocks of Manhattan were locked down by a force of 4,000 New York cops, including squadrons on mountain bikes cruising around looking for signs of trouble.
The protest by the ANSWER coalition went off peacefully as intended. There was even a gesture of sympathy towards the police for their role on September 11th, when a rock singer took over the amplifier and performed a lament for for the police who lost friends on that date.
The marchers showed more anger against the Bush administration than the forum. Placards read, "No US war on Somalia", "Let Iraq live", "US out of Afghanistan", "Solidarity with all immigrants", "Money for jobs, not for war", and "George Bush is the real terrorist".
On the day, 36 out of 7,000 marchers were arrested, most when police waded into a group at 59th St and Fifth Avenue and hauled out 27 protesters carrying plastic shields on the pretext that they were going to cause trouble.
By early evening the streets were quiet and the Forum guests made their way downtown for a multi-cultural evening of dancing and dining at the New York Stock Exchange. They had to abandon the Waldorf for a few hours to make way for the wedding of Ms Elizabeth Friedland and Dr Mark Meyer. The couple had refused to relocate their celebration when Davos decided to come to the Hudson, as invitations had already gone out to their 550 guests.